Who Am I to You?

On Being Related: Home for the Holidays, An Adoptee Prose Poem

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash Wabi Sabi

“There’s no place like Home for the Holidays” is a swoony, 1950s, Perry Como sentiment, full of jingle, joy, and warmth As we approach the shopping deadline, I wish you all the playfulness of the season, all that’s merry and bright, and I wish everyone a healthy, happy, safe winter, and a loving, caring year ahead. We can take but one at a time.

Who Am I To You? On Being Related: Home for the Holidays, An Adoptee Prose Poem

In my awkward adolescent adoptedness, unalike in manner, speech, habit, and appearance to all in my sphere, looking nothing like the tribe of cousins I was brought to, say, for a summer picnic, and, though not friends, we got along when placed together, finding threads of commonality in the language that straddled boys and make-believe, and yet, I felt the friction — was I a fact or a fiction? We were kin, not clan, nor truly cousins. I was the unsure alien who landed in their pod, who swam in their pool. Related; not so close, their parents alerted, cautioned, secretly pointed to our differences. Special is nice, but I’d prefer to fit in. Not in imagination, but in my bones.

Adopted apartness is the holiday anxiety, a palpable wounding, the grief and worry that reverberates, our voices echoing universal themes: displacement, discomfort, the “neither here nor there” of being out of place. The insecure self-loathing and doubt — if you were adopted, such are the feelings that resonate. We flee to the refuge, the comfort, and validation of kindred adoptee spirits, into the safety of mirrored circumstance. Seeking community with others uprooted, whose identities were once effaced. Replaced. We retreat into havens where our language of loss and grief is understood. Where we grieve loss of the maternal bond, severence, denial, rejection. The loss of fathers, siblings, heritage, human and civil rights, equal protection under the law, our birth certificates, truthful records, the refusal of citizenship.

We are viewed perpetual children: This is the origin, the seed, the reason for denying us what is rightfully ours, in the guise of protecting all interested parties, we are shielded from the stigma of illegitimacy by sealing adoption records, falsifying our birth certificates, the secrecy, lies, and myths by the law, and the greed of Adoption, the Institution. Heaped on us is the affliction, the curse of identity confusion.

Excavating for my memoir, I unearthed the source, perceived the root cause of my dread. Primal abandonment, maternal severance wreaks havoc on the newborn psyche, creating tidal waves of anxiety and panic.

An Air Force couple adopted me at one, thus, the wound was made complex by military family separations, transience, school changes, instability, unfamiliarity, and the loss of community, friends, and family. As an adult adoptee, the question returns each year with answers that vary with my stage in life. Well into my senior years, I prefer being just where I am.